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Secretary of Defense says U.S. will reevaluate ties with Russia.

george w. bush is flanked by sec'y of state condoleezza rice and defense secretary robert gates in the rose garden at the white house for a 13 august 2008 statement on russian / georgian / south ossetia conflict Author: wesawthat Keywords: george+w+bush russia georgia south+ossetia condoleezza+rice robert+gates august 2008 random Added: August 13, 2008

President Bush: 'Russia must keep its word and act to end the crisis.'

After lauding Oliver North for his new book that apparently has more pictures than it does pages (No doubt North s picture-book tells a much different story than the truth-laid-bare photos and accounts from an award-winning unembedded photojournalist like Dahr Jamail, but I digress), Sean Hannity asks North for his opinion on whether the President was right to compare the want to hold diplomatic talks with Iran to the appeasement of Nazis in the 1930’s. Download | Play Download | Play Oliver North: As you know, I’m the history guy at Fox News Channel, right? I’ve done this WWII series – 52 of our episodes about WWII. Had it not been for Chamberlain going to sit down with Adolf Hitler and try to cut a deal in Munich, WWII might never have happened, but it emboldened the dictator. That’s what the President said yesterday in Jerusalem. And a little reminder today, a shot across the bow here at the NRA, when John McCain got up and said, You cannot have these kinds of unconditional, no preconditions discussions, with despots and dictators - dead on the mark. For someone who was lucky not to have spent the better part of the last two decades making license plates, he s got some nerve touching this topic. This is the guy who oversaw the arms for hostages deal with Iran in 1985 (among other crimes), right in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war in which the US was actively and openly arming and supporting Saddam Hussein. Ollie North didn t just talk with Iran at a time they were our enemy in a proxy-war, he actually helped to arm them, bypassing Congress by violating the Boland Amendment to help fund an illegal war in Nicaragua. Lacking even a shred of credibility, Fox News history guy is to the truth in the historical record what Dick Cheney is to gun safety. He shouldn t be allowed anywhere near the subject, and anyone who believes a word of what he says about it is a fool. Negotiation is not appeasement and there are zero parallels between simply opening up a diplomatic dialogue with Iran and the capitulation to Adolf Hitler in the Munich Agreement. It s a ridiculous assertion, especially considering that the Bush administration itself has negotiated with Libya and North Korea, yet Iran s previous offers to put everything, including its nuclear program, on the table and peacefully negotiate have been completely ignored even after Iran had been an important ally of the coalition against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Oliver North, just like John McCain and other conservatives, don t even have a clue what they are talking about. Apparently no one in this administration ever thought to ask Bush s own Sec. of Defense, Neville Chamberlain Robert Gates, for his opinion: We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them. If there s going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can t go to a discussion and be completely the demander with them not feeling that they need anything from us. Exactly.

Last month on Fox News, Ret. Gen. Thomas McInerney, one of the Pentagon s propaganda team of military analysts exposed by David Barstow in the NYT, openly called for the US to begin committing tit-for-tat terrorist attacks by proxy inside Iran. Download | Play Download | Play McInerney: Here s what I would suggest to you. Number one, we take the National Council for Resistance to Iran off the terrorist list that the Clinton Administration put them on as well as the Mujahedin-e Khalq at the Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Then I would start a tit-for-tat strategy which I wrote up in the Wall Street Journal a year ago: For every EFP that goes off and kills Americans, two go off in Iran. No questions asked. People don t have to know how it was done. It s a covert action. They become the most unlucky country in the world. Media Matters exhaustive research into the NYT story shows that McInerney appeared on Fox News 144 times since Jan 2002, and according to this bio from last year s Intelligence Summit, McInerney is on the Board of Directors for several companies with defense-related contracts that would seem to benefit from his pro-war propaganda. For example, Alloy Surfaces Company (ASC), whose contracts for ammunition and explosives with the Department of Defense appear to have grown from $15 million in 2002 to more than $169 million in 2006. A conflict of interest, perhaps? The tactic that McInerney advocates of using Iranian opposition terrorist groups to carry out acts of terrorism inside Iran is not new, nor far-fetched. A little digging turned up numerous articles alleging that the pentagon had already been using the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and other groups in cross-border operations into Iran, at least until shortly after Sec Gates took over (Some news reports of attacks in Iran here, here, here, here, here. Iranian news video here). The MEK (aka MKO, NLA, PMOI, NCRI) is a terrorist group, as designated still by the State Dept, that has killed US troops and civilians before back in the 1970s. Even Bush s first deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, said of the MEK, I lived there [in Iran] for a year, and it was during that time that our people were killed by the MEK, assassinated. So from my point of view they were terrorists. David Ignatius wrote in the WaPo that back in 2003 the US actually rejected a deal with Iran to exchange MEK captives for several top al-Qaeda leaders. The White House apparently doesn t want you to know about the MEK. In Dec 2006, just days after Rumsfeld was forced to step down, the NYT published a heavily redacted op-ed by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann. Though none of the info was classified, all of which had previously been extensively reported in the news media, much of their article was blacked out because White House intervened before it went to print. In response, Leverett and Mann followed up with an accompanying piece What We Wanted to Tell You About Iran where they provided citations to previously reported sources for all of the redacted info. Raw Story compiled those sources in their The redacted Iran op-ed revealed and, surprise, many of the articles refer directly to the MEK terrorist group, but there had been nary a mention in the portions the White House allowed. So, to recap: One of the Pentagon s propaganda TV analysts who has clear ties to defense industries that would likely stand to benefit from any increased hostilities is advocating that the US ought to use a terrorist organization to commit acts of terrorism against Iran in response to alleged Iranian involvement in attacks against US forces in Iraq, which might be true, or maybe not. And if that wasn t outrageous enough, it seems that Bush may have been authorizing such tactics already.

WBZ's Ed Walsh speaks with Bob Schieffer, CBS News Chief Washington correspondent and host of CBS' Face the Nation.

Secretary Gates says Admiral Fallon's resignation is "the right thing to do."

POST TRIP HAZE that s me on the left getting a shot of Secretary boarding her plane in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Days after I ve unpacked my luggage, off-loaded the gear, and generally adjusted to this time zone, I still find myself in a bit of a post Mid-East trip haze. Just a week ago, I embarked on a trip with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to the Middle East. I was the US TV pool camera for the journey that included stops in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories. Not only are the trips physically grueling, but they pack so many stops in so few days that the entire experience is a blur. There are always memorable moments though. After a refuel stop in Shannon, Ireland we arrived in Sharm El Sheikh where Rice met with Gulf state leaders and Egyptian President Hosni Mubuarak. It was that meeting with Mubarak that cemented my street credz as a seasoned photojournalist. Egyptian photo ops are by far, the most insane crushes of humanity i ve ever encountered. Think Who concert. It s amazing that no camera crews aren t trampled to death entering these meetings for 30 seconds of shooting. In the first photo op, I held my own, but a bunch of Egyptian press elbowed and squeezed past me. No problem.. so those are the ground rules eh?? Gates, Rice, Mubarak in Sharm El Sheikh On the Mubarak photo-op, I decided that I would be the first camera in the room, and I enforced that decision in vigorous fashion, shall we say. We all got stuck in the doorway, but finally with a strong final push I broke through and got in. Well, seems as though the Egyptian press were not at all pleased with my determination and cried foul to our Embassy representative. Oh Mary please! Look if you re going to dish it out you d BEST be able to take it! The don t fly me all around the world NOT to get the picture. When the Egyptians complain about you.. it means you were doing your job. - Israeli cameraman Later at stops in both Israel and the Palestinian Territories, my counterparts in camera there confirmed that the Egyptian photographers were, bar none, the most ruthless. An Israeli cameraman remarked that that when the Egyptian crews complain about you: It means you were doing your job! As i did an end run around the same camerman, to get into a photo op later, he jokingly remarked: no wonder the Egyptians complained about you! How did you get in front of me!? What can I say it s a gift. Here s the TV Pool team. Front row, L-R: me, CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier, Back row, L-R: NBC soundman Johnnie Roth, NBC State Department producer Libby Leist This picture was taken as we motorcaded to the airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. We re reminded of the instability of the region at every stop along the trip. Each motorcade vehicle, including this one we re seen riding in here, is heavily armored top to bottom. So much so that the strain on the engines caused by the weight is evident. Having had a very close call myself in Baghdad a few years ago, the potential for danger is always in the back of my mind. Bulletproof glass, armor plate, and automatic weapons sitting on the floorboards are just reminders of the risk. Imagine then, the courage of colleague, and traveling TV companion Kimberly Dozier. Dozier was gravely wounded and nearly killed in a car bomb attack last summer that took the lives of CBS cameraman Paul Douglas, soundman James Brolan, a US soldier, and an Iraqi interpreter. This was the first time I had met Kimberly, but I d met Paul in Europe and had worked with him on Presidential trips a number of times, so the attack struck close to home for me. I was hesitant at first to ask her about her recovery and her recall of the incident, but toward the end of the trip I found that she was very open about it. Aside from being a lovely person, I truly admire her courage. She dropped off the trip in Ramallah to do some stories from the region. Frankly, if I had gone through what she had, I d be enjoying my retirement. I hope to get to work with her again some day. MAINTAINING VIDEO SILENCE Let s just say i was discouraged from doing a video blog of this trip, so I m only able to give you a video appetizer here. Because of my video efforts on my trip around the world with Defense Secretary Gates, other networks complained that my video blog material should be distributed to the pool. NBC complied of course, but for the life of me, I can t imagine that my mini DV footage will do anything other than sit on a shelf. It never occured to me that what amounted to an innocuous travelogue, would stir up controversy. On this Mid East trip, Rice was joined by Secretary Gates. The traveling Pentagon press confided to me that there are now new ground rules about blogging on the Secretary s plane. Essentially there will be none of it. So for now, I ll have to contain my video blogging to non-pool assignments. Share This

Our 45th show. We discussed the Senate confirmation of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, the withdrawal of John Bolton's nomination as U.S. ambassador to the UN, the release of the Iraq Study Group Report, Congressional work schedules, Quebec history, separatist movements, Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, and Christmas decorations at the White House. We spoke with 3 callers and the show lasted around 3 hours. We welcome feedback at radio AT americasdebate.com or http://radio.americasdebate.net/?contact Podcasts are not live, so please do not call. Thanks for listening!

The 2006 mid terms result in a new majority in the House and Senate, and a shake-up in the White House. The Tank Team talks about the impacts on our democracy. They then take a look at 2008 presidential contenders.